Bengaluru: Senior BJP leader B. Sriramulu appears to have failed in his efforts to woo two Congress legislators from Ballari district to back his sister, J. Shantha, who has been fielded by the saffron party from the iron ore rich constituency in the November 3 Lok Sabha bypoll.
Sources in the Congress party say Mr Sriramulu reached out to Congress legislators, B. Nagendra and E. Thukaram, who are also scheduled tribe leaders like him, for support, but was firmly turned down by the MLAs, who refused to betray their party.
This has upset Mr Sriramulu’s strategy to divide the Congress party and defeat its candidate V.S. Ugrappa who is also a Scheduled Tribe leader from Pavagada in Tumakuru district.
As Ballari has a high concentration of tribal votes, all parties are devising strategies to woo these communities. While Mr Thukaram is a Myasa Nayaka, who make up 80 per cent of the constituency’s tribal vote, Mr Nagendra , Mr Ugrappa and Mr Sriramulu belong to the tribal sub sect of Ooru Nayaka.
